The Bankruptcy of Arts Policy
Lately, we’ve been hearing and reading more and more complaints about how the government’s ‘cultural policy’ and that of art institutions are going bankrupt, mainly because of the ‘woke ideology.’ The danger is said to come primarily from the left, as every subsidy application is measured against the yardstick of ‘diversity and inclusion.’
Before I delve deeper into what I consider a far too simplistic stance, I suggest we finally discuss what we’re really talking about: arts policy. This is not about culture in a broader sense but about culture in the sense of what I want to call ‘pure art,’ that is, art where artistic quality comes first.
Now, regarding the complaint about the ‘woke ideology.’ There are certainly opinions, especially regarding classical music, that claim, for example, that Beethoven became ‘Beethoven’ because he was a white Western European man. I don’t call such statements ‘woke,’ but ‘pseudo-woke.’ No one who truly understands classical music would defend such a nonsensical position, but everyone, I hope, agrees that racism and exclusion must be fought.
The problem with the subsidy policy concerning the arts is that far more weight is given to the peripheral conditions than to what it should really be about: artistic quality. And indeed, in recent years, the conditions of ‘diversity and inclusion’ have been fashionable, but not too long ago, it was about ‘cultural entrepreneurship’ and ‘audience reach.’ These are primarily conditions that come from the right, rooted in neoliberalism, which was also embraced in the 1990s by the supposedly left-leaning Labour Party. We still remember the State Secretary for Culture, Rick van der Ploeg. And later, Medy van der Laan, who, on behalf of D66, further promoted entrepreneurship. And, of course, Stef Blok and his appointee Halbe Z., who believed that the arts should not be subsidized at all. The word ‘woke’ wasn’t even in vogue back then.
Where does this increasing emphasis on peripheral conditions really come from — the left or the right, or is something else going on? You bet! Art is ‘elitist!’ This accusation comes from both the left and the right. In classical music, this complaint began in the early 20th century. The music of composers like Arnold Schönberg and later Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen was considered incomprehensible and therefore elitist by large segments of the population. A similar thing happened in visual art with so-called ‘abstract art.’ What was meant was non-figurative art, because even ‘The Girl with a Pearl Earring’ by Vermeer is a form of abstraction.
Thus, around the 1980s, there was a call for music to be ‘beautiful’ again. Away with all those ‘wrong notes!’ — meaning dissonances. In Die Musik in unserem Leben [1980], Nikolaus Harnoncourt writes about the problem of ‘comfort and ease’ that has settled into our modern lives. We want to consume music in a comfortable way.
Since music is no longer found at the center of our lives, all this has changed: now that it is regarded as an ornament, it is felt that music should first and foremost be “beautiful.” Under no circumstances should it be allowed to disturb or startle us. The music of the present cannot fulfill this requirement because at the very least, like all art, it reflects the spiritual and intellectual situation of its time, and this is true of our present time as well. Yet honestly coming to terms with our spiritual and intellectual situation cannot be merely beautiful: it has an impact on our very lives and is therefore disturbing to us. This has resulted in the paradoxical situation that people have turned away from contemporary art because it is disturbing, perhaps necessarily so. Rather than confrontation, we sought only beauty, to help us to overcome the banality of everyday life. Thus art in general, and music in particular, became simply ornamental and people turned to historical art and to old music, for here they could find the beauty and harmony that they sought.
[Engelse vertaling van Mary O’Neill, in Baroque Music Today: Music as Speech. Towards a New Understanding of Music (Portland, OR: Amadeus Press, 1988), pp. 11-13.]
Thus, the pressure on the subsidy policy increased because more and more people no longer recognized the social value of art. And then it became a ‘leftist hobby.’ As a result, more and more additional requirements were imposed on arts subsidies. State Secretary Ronald Plasterk therefore introduced the requirement that arts institutions generate about 20 percent of their own income. “I can’t explain why the Dutch Opera gets subsidies, but the Rolling Stones don’t.”
Here we have the real problem of arts policy, and this problem also touches on the art itself. Let’s stop blaming a small number of pseudo-wokers as scapegoats and focus on the real, underlying issue: a mix of neoliberalism and rapidly advancing technology, which has alienated most of our society from the arts. Maybe we need to consider more carefully to what extent we are still living in the age of Romantic idealism — have we truly left it behind, and if so, what has taken its place?
Perhaps we need to create new myths, myths in which we embrace that Romantic idealism in a different way, or find a response to it. The same applies to the rapid advances in technology—we need to learn to filter the tsunami of data we are being overwhelmed with much better. And it is precisely the arts that serve as an exceptionally suitable medium for this. We don’t need to first formulate an academically grounded theory; we will sing, play, paint, write, create installations, and whatever other forms we can imagine.
We must, in any case, move forward. Not downward, but upward. In the madrigal Cease sorrows now, Thomas Weelkes has the music rise chromatically with the line: “Yet whilst I hear the knolling of the bell / Before I die, I’ll sing my faint farewell.”
— Cornelis de Bondt, October 2, 2024